On episode #33 of Founder Real Talk, I had the great opportunity to interview Dheeraj Pandey, Founder & CEO of Nutanix, the cloud computing software company on a mission to make computing infrastructure invisible. Dheeraj’s story is remarkable, and he’s both thoughtful and introspective. Long before founding Nutanix in 2009, Dheeraj was already taking risks. He first traveled outside of India to attend a Ph.D. program at the University of Texas (Austin), which he ultimately didn’t finish. This didn’t stop him from founding one of the fastest growing startups in history (in Nutanix’ 5th full year, it eclipsed $100M in revenue). I asked Dheeraj about what it was like to create the hyperconverged market category. We also discuss what shifts he and his team have had to make since going public in 2016, especially given the market shift to the cloud faster than anyone anticipated. Dheeraj has a unique take on what it means to be a public company and believes that “If the worst is not bad enough then why wouldn’t you do it?” There are so many more quotable quotes in this episode. Enjoy!